U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that he would meet with his Canadian counterpart, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne, on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors, adding that the U.S. was not in a war with Canada.
“I think this is very unfortunate that Prime Minister Carney has turned this into a political shouting match. I mean, we’re not at war with Canada,” Bessent told CNBC in an interview.
He added that Carney was “not doing what’s best for Canada.”
In his interview, Bessent also called out Canada’s retaliatory tariffs.
“I don’t think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who’s 13 times larger than you are,” he said.
Strong majorities of Canadians support the federal government walking away from U.S. trade talks and hitting back with retaliatory tariffs, a new poll suggests, which is translating to persistent support for Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals.
However, the Ipsos polling conducted exclusively for Global News and released Saturday also shows that support varies by age, with fewer Generation Z and millennial adults backing the Liberals and their approach to the growing U.S. trade war.
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The poll found that 63 per cent of Canadians surveyed feel Canada was right to stand firm in the trade negotiations, “even if it meant higher costs and job losses,” while just 18 per cent said Canada should have made additional sacrifices to get a deal.
An even larger majority, 73 per cent, said they back Ottawa’s “dollar for dollar” counter-tariffs on $28 billion worth of U.S. goods, matching the up to 50 per cent tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump last week after trade talks collapsed.
But those numbers fall to 48 per cent of Gen Z adults and 57 per cent of millennials who support Canada standing firm, and 59 per cent of millennials who were happy to see Canada’s retaliatory tariffs. By comparison, about 80 per cent of older boomers supported both of those positions.
— with files from Reuters and Global’s Sean Boynton
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